GOP senators defeat Obama's $447B jobs bill

WASHINGTON -- United against Barack Obama, Senate Republicans voted Tuesday night to kill the jobs package the president had spent weeks campaigning for across the country, a stinging loss at the hands of lawmakers opposed to stimulus-style spending and a tax increase on the very wealthy.

Forty-six Republicans joined with two Democrats to filibuster the $447 billion plan. Fifty Democrats had voted for it, but the vote was not final. The roll call was kept open to allow Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., to vote. The likely 51-48 eventual tally would be far short of the 60 votes needed to keep the bill alive.

The demise of Obama's $447 billion jobs package was expected, despite his campaign-style efforts to swing the public behind it.

The White House and leaders in Congress were already moving on to alternative ways to address the nation's painful 9.1 percent unemployment, including separating the legislation into smaller, more digestible pieces and approving long-stalled trade bills.

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The White House appears most confident that it will be able to continue a 2-percentage-point Social Security payroll tax cut through 2012 and to extend emergency unemployment benefits to millions of people -- if only because, in the White House view, Republicans won't want to accept the political harm of letting those provisions expire.

Democrats Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jon Tester of Montana -- both up for re-election next year in states where Obama figures to lose -- broke with their party in Tuesday night's vote.